Artificial Intelligence: Perception Versus Reality

By RevUnit

October 09, 2018

The future of artificial intelligence is not entirely certain— a bit like a mysterious void.

Technology has taken over human jobs
or made them easier since its inception—from the first washing machines
to smartphones that manage our schedules and allow us to communicate in
real time with someone on the other side of the world. But the prospect
of tech that’s designed to act like the human brain, even surpassing
human ability to complete a particular task, makes many people feel
uneasy.

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said,
“One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets,
out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and
developing weapons we cannot even understand.” But is the threat of
robot control possible—or even likely? How much do we need to worry?

We sit on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution.
AI and other emerging technologies are here, but they’re still being
developed—and no one, not even experts in the field, knows the future of
AI and other new tech. As efforts to develop smarter artificial
intelligence push forward, it’s important to look at the potential
threats and benefits of AI realistically, with an eye to the future.

In this article we’ll look at several
of the most common perceptions of the threats of AI—and delve into
whether those perceptions are accurate.

Perception: Robots will take over the world.

Let’s
touch on the big issue first: How likely is robot control? Estimates
for when singularity will happen—the creation of a generalized
superhuman intelligence—range wildly. The concept has been around since
1965, with dates ranging from 1993 to 2023 to 2045.
Clearly, we’re not there yet. Thus far, applications of artificial
intelligence have operated within a narrow range—and while there’s no
reason to think we won’t continue to develop better and smarter
technology, the possibility that we’ll have robot overlords in the next
50 years is unlikely. As the New York Times reports, “You won’t be obsolete for a long time, if ever.”

Perception: Robots will take our jobs.

AI
will reshape the way we work. But whether the impact is harmful or
beneficial depends on how corporations and governments react to the
increasing ability of AI to manage jobs currently completed by human
workers.

According to a Pew Research study,
two-thirds of Americans expect that in 50 years, robots will do much of
the work currently done by humans. But studies that measure the actual
predicted impact of technology on jobs tell a different story. A
comparison of studies that measure the number of jobs technology will
destroy (and create) reveals that no one really knows how many jobs
technology will replace. According to
Technology Review: “Predictions range from optimistic to devastating,
differing by tens of millions of jobs even when comparing similar time
frames.” A Gartner study found that by 2020, AI will eliminate 1.8 million jobs—but create 2.3 million.

As we explored in this article
about emerging technology, new technology applications seem to fuel
growth and boost nearby economies, even if they do eliminate some jobs.
And new technology also creates jobs. Forbes writer Andrew Arnold points out,
“Even today, there are a huge number of technology jobs that didn’t
exist ten years ago: State-of-the-art programming, data science, web
security, marketing and sales.”

What about the jobs that are replaced? It’s not difficult to figure out which jobs are most susceptible to elimination—think repetitive motion. According to McKinsey Research,
“Activities most susceptible to automation include physical ones in
predictable environments, such as operating machinery and preparing fast
food. Collecting and processing data are two other categories of
activities that increasingly can be done better and faster with
machines.” That doesn’t mean those workers automatically end up in the
unemployment pool. Future workers and employers should focus on
creativity, planning, and cross-domain thinking skills as well as
professions that involve communication and service to others. Education
and training options in these areas provide a way forward for workers in industries susceptible to the threats of artificial intelligence.

Perception: AI will lead to a constant-surveillance state and a loss of personal privacy.

Algorithms that can identify and track specific humans and objects from video footage already exist. And, according to The Verge, “the skill of analyzing scenes, activities, and movements is expected to rapidly improve.” Companies such as Google, MIT, IBM, and DeepMind are currently building video databases to improve facial recognition and behavior analysis technologies.

At the same time, current AI technology can mimic human voice and manipulate video
with results that aren’t distinguishable from real life, posing real
threats to individual privacy and safety as well as accurate news
reporting.

But while AI has amazing capacity in the realm of surveillance and personal data, experts say
we’re nowhere near the point where a computer can understand media
with the same insight as a human. Still, we’re making progress toward
programs that could be active observers and participants in current
surveillance and data systems. Whether these technologies will be
implemented in a good or effective way, however, is still a human
problem—the technologies themselves are value neutral. In the words of
computer science professor Joanna Bryson, this “is not to say we
should panic, but rather that we should all be working very, very hard
to navigate and govern our way out of these hazards. Hopefully AI is
also helping make us smart enough to do that.”

Perception: AI technology will lead to an international arms race as nations compete to develop autonomous technology.

We’re
on the cusp of lethal autonomous weapons—technology that can identify
and engage human targets without a human operator. These weapons would
allow nations to sustain deadly attacks on opposing forces while
limiting damage to the attacking force. One worry is that this strategy
will lead to attrition: a build-up of robot technologies warring against
each other until numbers become the deciding factor (Slate).

As with every other application for
AI, the potential for good or harm lies in the human application of the
technology. One solution? Develop government treaties that ban killer robots and refuse to allow these harmful applications to take root.

Perception: AI will perpetuate human biases.

In 2016, Microsoft shut down its
chat-bot Tay after less than 24 hours online. Learning from user
interactions on Twitter, the bot had started spouting racist,
inflammatory, and offensive statements with no apparent knowledge of its
misdeeds. In another case, a ProPublica article identified an algorithm
for predicting future crime that wrongly labeled black defendants as future criminals almost twice as often as white defendants.

Racism, sexism, and all our other human biases seem to be easily
perpetuated by artificial intelligence, ingrained in technology systems
in the same way these biases are ingrained in our cultures. But
technology can remove bias too. AI systems don’t get hungry, tired, or
emotionally involved—all human symptoms that can impact
decision-making. Take this study
from The Economist, which found that parole boards were more likely to
free convicts after they’d had a lunch break. A carefully designed AI
system wouldn’t be subject to human whims that lead to such major
discrepancies in life-impacting areas.

An article from Technology Review posits a solution: the public should be involved in creating and evaluating the usefulness of algorithms as much as the algorithm-creators. Although AI technologies can offer more fairness than other solutions, the public needs to be informed about what data the algorithm is using to make its decisions

Although initial perceptions of AI
technology can put it in the realm of the frightening, it’s also easy to
have blind faith in tech that’s so powerful it can exceed human
capacities. Mathematician and data scientist Cathy O’Neil posits
the key to demystifying AI lies not in operating solely with good
intentions, but also implementing and refining auditing systems to help
us understand why algorithms are making the choices they do. This kind
of transparency is essential to creating better tech that will solve
human problems, not amplify them.

Author

RevUnit

RevUnit is an award-winning digital strategy and product studio that partners with some of the world’s largest enterprises empower their employees via intelligent technology. Leveraging human-centric design, strategic vision, and emerging tech, RevUnit builds digital solutions and strategies that unlock productivity and drive employee engagement.